Explorations, culture, nature

Reforesting the Kundudo and Mt. Hakim. Together

By the Misrak Kirs Association, to the Regional States of Oromia and Harari.

Mt Kundudo, fief of endangered feral horses and of one of the finest caves in Africa

Introduction

Harar is the main attraction along the newly proposed cultural, historic and naturalistic route of the Ethiopian East, linked to Somaliland and Djibouti through a set of new and known attractions.

Wide discoveries in the fields of speleology, or cave science, archaeology, history are being made as we map resources for tourism along the route.

Towns and trade posts are being uncovered, together with ancient Chinese pottery and coins, clearly pointing to the fact our eastern route was an ancient path for long distance, significant trade and movement of peoples.

A first DNA test indicates the Argobba peoples around Harar and on the way along the escarpment to the Christian highlands are of genuine and ancient Arab descent, the research is ongoing.

The evident research interest to reconstruct our past takes a new dimension as members of the newly formed Misrak Kirs/Eastern Heritage association propose action stemming from the finds, to turn them into potential revenue for impoverished locals. As rains fail, our will to convert what we believe was the main medieval silk route to a string of related sustainable tourism venues only increases.

Yet climatically dangerous and economically disastrous forest and environmental destruction is continuing along the route.

We believe tree planting combined with environmental education is the present best use, as well as a favourite means to increase now very limited resources to realize and promote the tourism route. Well organized, education related reforestation is a prime source of donations.

Found caves are so far good for cave specialists, attractive hotels are lacking in Harar itself, some areas are potentially dangerous; our idea is still on a hard upward slope. Finishing the last forests, destroying, as sadly is happening town ruins and amazing rock paintings will make it utterly impossible.

Conservation is our must, even before promotion of the resources in our East.

The magic slopes of Kundudo, fief of Africa’s most ancient feral horses, covering Africa’s most astounding newly found cave, descending to a dozen of special rock painting sites have been practically totally deforested in the last 15 years. Sacred mount Hakim, overlooking Harar, had already met a similar fate.

Community forestry is our first choice.

Concept

We need to use existing tree nurseries, work with the local administration to organize sensitization on ecological issues like tree planting, climate change, erosion, practical uses of original trees.

Original trees will be planted in five areas, to save and extend areas where the vegetation has been rescued or is still somewhat pristine. In a knowingly, studied natural way. No line planting!

Original noted species include Olive, Juniperus, Ficus, Podocarpus, Cordia and many shrubs yet to be better defined.

Ficus vasta, Warka.

We will plant, after shared local courses, all of the above, in five areas, covering around 30 hectares around the Kundudo. The effort is great, yet the original recently lost Mederro State Forest covered over 9000 hectares. The area, with the exception of lower, flatter and fertile area dedicated now to vital chat fields will recover over less than 30 years, considerably if not fully, if simply let to grow naturally.

Left alone, not pondered daily by pastors extirpating any new leaf, from the root, to feed cattle at home. Kundudo and environs, a set of five proposed intervention areas

Protection will mean all five indicated areas will be at least partially fenced, local participants will include paid guards, other areas as ecolodges, village green areas will be secluded to avoid arson, felling, trampling, grazing and uprooting of regrowth.

We intend to create a model and a method to replicate it over the area. One example is the activity of the Wukro mission and local administration in TIgray. The example of Abba Angel, a Spaniard, has permitted a green revolution there, seeing the town rejuvenated with green and the province endowed with the astounding figure of eight million trees, over a decade, ecological river basin improvements and irrigation schemes that feed thousands. A similar... endemic example is that of Aba Gebresilasie Kidane, a tree planting monk from Lalibela.

Abba Angel Olaran and Prof. Marco of Misrak Kirs evaluating a new dam

Wukro. Angel watering trees with locals and volunteers he formed.

We are not yet ready to replicate on the Kundudo efforts and successes in Wukro, yet we intend to try hard.

Irrigation could be a distinct, further project.

As to Mt. Hakim, a more limited 2500m altitude area just above Harar, its relatively flat top areas have long since been cultivated. While one or two areas will be earmarked for original tree planting, eucalyptus or other rapidly growing cash plantations are envisaged Mt. Hakim’s views are spectacular. The historic and ritual sense of the sacred Harari mount commands trees.

We intend to mount a proper campaign on the environment in Harar centred around the limited tree planting effort.

Harar is a World Heritage Site. Unesco pressure has halted probably inopportune condominium erection between the last propagates of Mt Hakim and Jegol, the fortified city. Planting three dozens of eucalyptuses in the right places would very cost effectively reduce their visual impact to near zero and better life conditions of residents. We will do it.

Scope and costing

We plan to plant around 30 Ha in the Kundudo area and 10 on Mt. Hakim, plus around sixty eucalyptuses to hide new condominiums striking the eye on Jegol views from the west.

An hectare can be planted with 300 original trees at a cost, including inspections and watering for two years, of around 40 birr each, thanks to local participation. This is 12.000 birr or 500 euros, ca. 700 USD. The whole planting would imply 480.000 birr, 24.000 euros, 30.000 USD, but economies of scale may mean lesser costs.

Fencing and warden costs, partly to be produced by the communities implied, will be as follows:

Five wardens in the Kundudo, one on Mt. Hakim, birr 1,800 monthly, 21,600 yearly, we engage them for a two year period for a total 43,200 birr cost.

Two three day courses, one in Harar, one in Gursum, total cost 10,000 birr each, 20.000 in all.

TOTAL PROJECT PROSPECTED COSTS, BIRR 583,200.

Podocarpus falcata, Zigba, in nursery

Loose planting is cost effective and nature friendly: a great part of regeneration is left to time, and the simple fact that locals want a forest, are nurturing it, are no longer uprooting whatever has leafs.

Courses will be given to administrative personnel in Harar, and in Gursum also with service personnel from Ejersa Goro, covering the East Slopes and Adem Goba proposed areas in the satellite view above.

Planting will only ensue serious training, thus any minimal seed money recovered by the association will kick start action, provided association members have lobbied the local Gov’t in advance, obtaining their extended support.

This is no NGO out-driven proposal. It will stem from local will, a round table resolution taken from stakeholders around, or it will simply not happen.

Marco, Addis, 26 September 2012, Demera.

The BIG TEN

The big ten are the rare grand fine mammals one can look for along the Extended East Route.

They are endemic or near endemic, one can only find them in Ethiopia or on a limited area. Most of them are endangered.

These rarities are not in a classic Tanzania or Kenya park, one has to go and find them off the beaten trail!

They are totally majestic, and deserve all the world's attention.

Grevy's Zebra, or Imperial Zebra. Endangered, around 2000 left, only 120 in Ethiopia Babile Elephants, we love them! Only about 500 left, once believed to be a subspeciesThe Black Lion, or Abyssinian Lion.A genetically distinct population.The Mountain Nyala, impressive antelope, only found in Ethiopia along the EER, 2500 left!

The Kundudo Feral horse, one of only two feral groups in Africa. Now sadly all in captivity.The Somali Wild Ass Impressive Gelada Baboons, endemic to Ethiopia, are in reality grass grazers!Colobus Monkey, the southern type, found on the EER, is most likely an eco adaptation or a subspecies The Beisa Orix, 730 in the AWASH PARK The Semien Wolf, endemic rodent predator, is found on the Ankober variant, in the Guassa plateau. Only 300-400 left after a rabies epidemic in 1990.

The main areas of naturalistic interest along the new touristic route are here:

THE BIG TEN IN A VIEW:

The Abesha in their environment, Ethiopian people and nature

Action Research to save some endangered pearls of Eastern Ethiopia offeringa developed and complete tourism route as an economic alternative to theirrapid and irreversible destruction. Reports from two missions in early 2008.

Dedicated to the Presidents of the Regional States of Oromia and Harari.

Abstract: a two part paper conceived as a personal contribution to the Environment ProtectionAuthority and to the Ministry of Tourism in Ethiopia. The first part overviews a few threats toenvironment as a knowledgeable passer by would notice, and proposes some advice.The second presents the findings of two missions to the Kundudo, the home of feral horses, andelaborates on how this rediscovered wealth could be an attraction on a defined east tour route.

1-Research setting and justification

I have started to get engaged directly in environment and development related issues in Ethiopiasince my first seven year contract as a rural development teacher at the Italian state run seniorsecondary school in Addis Ababa, in 1995. I initiated a local NGDO, the Triticale ConsultativeGroup to diffuse a cultivation with considerable ecological and food potential. I enter in continuouscontact with various fields as administrator of Ethiopia’s milk producers and processors association,EMPA, I co-founded. As a milk sector investor I regularly interact with people and administration.As an Italian teacher of development and ecology with a long experience in teaching and field actionresearch, I attempted recently the promotion of some of Ethiopia’s absolute environmental pearls tocountries that do not simply know them yet.My first such engagement was directing a multinational team that promoted the Semien Mountainsthrough the first precise measurement of Ras Dashen, through modern technologies1.The measurement, 4549 m ±2, is official in the Country and recognized by most majortopographic and mountaineering circles worldwide. The roof of Ethiopia was officially the most misquoted peak on the net, and de facto the worst measured significant mountain in the world.Trekking Italia, a major Italian mountaineers association, with more than 20,000 members, initiated a regular yearly tourism program in the Semiens as a direct consequence of this activity. Mountaineersgroups in Spain have done the same thing.

A DGPS on one of the peaks. Five were employed

In a visit to Harar, during preparations of the Ras Dejen measurement and promotion feat, I heard ofthe probable existence of a pack of feral horses, next to extinction, on overlooking Mount Kundudo.

I immediately started to investigate the claim through informants from the region, as nothing couldbe traced in existing literature, apart from a biography of his Majesty Haile Selassie.I subsequently personally lead two Italian Missions to the Kundudo.This has brought me to tie strong personal and conservation work contacts with local authorities,possibly gain their respect, certainly some confidence and obtain from His Excellency MuradAbdulhadi and through him from His Excellency Abbadulla Gemmechu, Presidents respectively ofthe Regional Federal States of Harari and Oromia, a mandate to work on a more vast action researchproject.This is the object of this paper.

It consists of direct research conduced with the region’s peoples in specific areas to preserve placesof astounding naturalistic value, under severe threat, to create economic alternatives to theirongoing destruction.Tourism, and in this particular case studying how to develop a route in the Country’s East appearsthe key alternative. Extending it to Rift Valley localities and possibly to Somaliland could prove thecreation of a tourist path of great economic value.

2-Environmental Degradation, as seen touring around

A brief analysis of disturbing signs of severe degradation. Some ways out.Whilst Ethiopia is unfortunately the single African Country with the worst ecosystemsdegradation (UNEP Global Environment Outlook Geo4 report, 2006)¹, this is particularly true ofsome areas, whilst others show a steady or sometimes even bettering situation.Throughout areas like Sidamo and parts of Gurage, for example, stands a long tradition ofagriculture that depends on trees and shrubs like Coffee and Musa ensete (the Abyssinian starchbanana, grown for its floury stem parts and not for the fruit). This appears to have fostered a cultureof respect for tree-shaded spots and bear a diffused use of original alternatives to plastic bags inthe form of straws and in particular banana leaves as packaging material.Population pressure, a misunderstanding of the concept of personal freedom in an ambient whereenvironmental education and a culture of recycling and reuse is virtually unheard of has had rapid

¹Ethiopia is all vulnerable or critical, southern Europe fares worse. No excuse to destroy our land.Europe has increasing forest areas, destruction was mostly done centuries ago, it is not ongoing now.

degradation consequences. Hundreds of thousands have taken freedom after the Communist regimeas the right to destroy what was felt as guarded state property, as the State now would let you do it.A global analysis of the situation has not been attempted to the best of our knowledge, and iswell beyond the scope of this brief paper.I would like to point out a few elements that will both serve as general indicators of the situation andbe possible target of other, further studies. This is by no means a full account of environmentdegradation; take it as a voyager’s note on it, as seen during the Kundudo conservation attempt.1- Growingly, plastic bags became of generalized use,over the past three to four years in particular.Two considerable size factories started productions inDebre Zeyt alone in the last four years, both employing inexcess of 400 workers each. Their revenue tops easily 20million birr yearly, production is almost exclusively lowdensity polyethylene bags, ten of tons, dozens of millionsbags per month.Most of them, including tons still imported -by containers a The plastic bag tree, a common Ethipia sight nowadays... week- are extremely poor quality, very thin and notreusable. There is no concept of their proper disposal, theyare invariably gathered by private rubbish collectors or the public sector and make good show ofthemselves dumped in the immediate outskirts of both small and big cities, usually near a main road:a modern welcome sign for passers by. After a few days winds participate in the spreading of thebags over vast areas, creating permanent Christmas trees of dubious taste to say the least.A good example of this was found by the second Italian mission to the Kundudo just under Stinico,fortunately over a small area the rocks, trees and ground were covered by them, blue, white andyellowish in colour, on the way up to the amazing rock paintings we are to discuss further.Firstly, the spread of thicker reusable bags would solve the problem where natural container bagsare hard to propose, secondly, amassing them better in more suitable places and burning themrapidly far from houses would be a good temporary solution.As avoiding their use altogether has proven difficult everywhere, a ban on the import andproduction of the very thin non reusable type and incentives to reutilize and recycle thick oneswould be a good step to take.

2- Water contamination in areas near towns, both big and small.I have many times witnessed the fantastic colouring assumed by the small permanent river thatflows under the industrial area after Akaki, next to the last road climb before approaching Dukem. Strong and changingshades of violet, blue, red, yellow, sometimes green. A pitythese highly contaminated waters that indicate heavy metalsand potent solvents (no dye factory in the area) flow to theAkaki marshes (Abba Samuel Hayk), Addis Ababa’s mainfresh water supply.Already during the first year of my stay a big healthy dog Red river, China. Rarer there now common around Addis! owned by and Italian friend drank water from the creek underthe Bihere Tsige park along the Debre Zeyt Road in town. She died in awful pain the day after.

3- Heavy air. No research has been conducted to the best of my knowledge on the effects of airpollution in Addis. Tourists are in some cases presented thin traditional scarves by clever touroperators on their arrival. Invariably they use them on the first day in Addis on their faces, to try andward off the particulate, the powders, the gases and the odours of downtown Addis.A simple test would be measuring the first rains’ pH, further analyzing their NOx and sulphurcontents, possibly, thin solids (PM10). In a near future, a couple of automatic air pollutionmonitoring stations should be deployed in central Addis, to know the situation by the day and suggest avoiding the centerto young, old and lung sufferers during the worst days. Aserious preventative measure would consist in equipping majormotoring test centers with exhaust gas measuring equipment,and denying annual visit to old, heavy polluters. VAT has beenenforced successfully.Heavy import taxes that encourage all to use fascist eramuseum pieces or nearly as old cars should be scrapped, with Addis when air was still bearable, it is now one of the worst in the world evident economic and health advantages.A couple of roundabouts on the ring road alone (Gerji and Abo) create each an average 20 min.wait at rush hours. Just because the centre green is too big and clearly restricts the carriageway. Aquick calculation: somewhere in the order of 50,000 birr petrol burnt uselessly per day, withoutcounting car wear, pollution effects, time lost. A slight redesign would solve the problem.No one has an estimate of life years lost in Addis by all of us, due to lung and circulation illnesses.The lungs of a long time resident, particularly in some areas of downtown Addis are as black asthose of a life long smoker’s. This is an area where some directed research would yield interesting,drastic results rapidly, and may produce some air pollution control elicited by the fortunates ofAddis, who sure do not want to die young.

4- Generalized forest felling occurred during the last phase of the ousting of the Derg andparticularly after that. Far too much to give our kids a future in a Country that resembles the greenone we knew, just in 1991.Almost every peasant took “freedom” as a right to destroy all trees everywhere, a resource felt toinvariably by everyone all over Ethiopia be the government’s, not the community’s. Still, a number ofprimary forests subsist. Sometimes in small patches.Extended forests are found towards Sudan, in the Beni Shangul area for example.The 8,545 Ha of the Menderro State forest under the Kundudo, declared in 1986, were practically completelydestroyed in 1994.Many town dwellers still buy coal on the Langano shoresor the former Rift valley park area. Fifty birr per long bag, filled with quality coal on top and

WhIrlwinds now raises more and more topsoil, another side of climate change

poor under, against eighty in Addis. The boy stops you on the road.The bags are hidden in the bush.At the fall of the Derg, coal was around 12-15 birr per bag or even less, in Addis Ababa.All our forests were disappearing by the day.It is never too late, we need to replant seriously: original trees, in a natural pattern.One island alone of the 37 of lake Tana holds some near pristine forest, in the Gorgora/Mendabasmall archipelago to the north of the majestic lake. It should be saved.

Sidamo region. Little can now be done to reverse a meaningless, awful mistake. As an example, Icite the Shala disaster. An amazing lake with very salty deep blue waters had a few thousand hectares of dense acacia thicket around. In the last three years warden’s salaries werestopped, two mules every minute would take away a fallen tree, a 40 ton lorry filled to the brink –one every twenty minutes- would loot illegally the magic white perfect quartzite Awash park, photo Paola Borghi

sand near breathtaking boiling hot spas that certainly deserve better attention. A multi storey lodge’s unfinished frame stands above what is left of the forest, last crime to perfect a near total destruction.Abiyata orAbijata lake near by has lost most of its Flamingo population due to water decrease spurned off by different uses of the Bulbulla river, its only affluent.The distant Necc Sar and Mago reserves have been abandoned by the family of that clever friend of Nelson Mandela’s, the one Madiba himself convinced to help save Ethiopianwildlife. Because it is one of the best in Africa, and simply the most endangered on the continent. Reasons given for this serious drawback were the incapacity of the local administration to stop cattle fromroaming around. It could well also be poor tourism revenue for the South African family. And an authoritatibve approach by the Dutch South African.Awash Girl

If the tourists do not come, an administration should not destroy its pearls, rather, promote themmore intelligently, constantly, cleverly, with a resilience and cultural pride that has always been andshould be Ethiopia’s own mark.

5- Minor, but increasing tourism pressure results in paradoxical situations, like the one of the ErtaAle crater. The world’s most astounding active fluid lava volcano, easily spotted from satellitephotos and sat image viewing programs of all sorts, just one of three in the world where inner earthglowing is seen permanently, the oldest of the three, has become the target of disturbing littering.Just a decade ago, it was only the sought, distant objective of volcanologists’ expeditions. The likesof Aarun Tazieff considered it the world’s volcano marvel. So do now hundreds of uneducatedtourists who have littered most sides with hundreds, if not thousands of plastic water bottles too farfrom the lava to be molten or burnt. A sign on the spot and a warning by EPA to tourist operators,not more than ten, in the Erta Ale business should solve the issue, followed with a decent fine if touragents are not complying. The same should rapidly perform a clean up of their misdeeds, payinglocals. I annex here a sign which could be posted by the crater.3-The Tourism Alternative. Or how a few real rare environment pearls weshould save for ourselves will produce great economic development.The table shows, from WTO data, the considerable growth in Ethiopia of the world fastest growingindustry, Tourism. We could fare better, compared toother main East Africa Destination. Yet tourism isalready, definitely, the Country’s single biggestindustry sector, with around 6% of GDP createdwhere industry is totally worth around a third of thenational GDP (‘Euromonitor Intl.’ in a private marketresearch report on tourism in Ethiopia). The samereport states: “The government is proving itscommitment and willingness to develop tourism through a number of initiatives. Tourism is afeatured component of Ethiopia's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) that aims to combatpoverty and encourage development in the country. However, tourism is only briefly mentioned inthe paper and it fails to delineate a strategic vision for its further development. Another morerelevant initiative is the creation of the Ethiopian Tourism Paradigm (ETP), which acts as a ministryof tourism to promote its further development. Despite these efforts, Ethiopia has several challengesto overcome in expanding travel and tourism, the most important of which is the country's negativepublic image and international perception. As such, the prospects for growth in travel and tourismremain very limited, as suggested by the barely 2% increase in tourist arrivals in 2006”¹.A thoroughly vital sector deserving a lot of attention. I believe personally and strongly we have tomove immediately along new pathways too few, if any, have tried:

1- Participatory Conservation, saving our pearls with the people living in and around them.2- Action research to promote and save fantastic environments that are depleted by the day.3- Offer Tourism as the real economic alternative to forest felling, environment destruction.4- Open new tourist routes to explore and put to value our natural riches and know ourpeoples in their authentic environment.

A three-four storey countryside tourist lodge, unfinished at costs above most investors’ budget inEthiopia makes no sense. Placed on the shores of Lake Shala, where all vegetation has been lost justas the lodge was being designed and even the white sands -an engineer once told me so pure it isgood for airplane glass- at the amazing hot springs nearby leave place for huge excavation holes, it isthe epitome, the best idea one can get of wrong use of natural resource, the one I dubbed the ShalaDisaster. To the defense of the owners, the shrub around it is the only one not cut. Proof littleattention is enough to avoid further destruction. A strong will can even reverse many situations.Ecolodges, environment friendly constructions, are much cheaper to make, offer better opportunitiesfor locals’ revenue, can be realized rapidly in most cases. They offer an aura of adventure which is tome the real frontier of Tourism in the Country, what we should be able to sell.Ethiopia was the country of myth and religion, the distant land of awe, of creation.Rasselas and Prester Jean the giant figures of an Ethiopia not true to life, but fantastic, attractive.At the onset of the second Italo Abyssinan war in 1935 flocks of journalists came to Addis in twoopposite outfits, some dressed in Sahara hats, others heavily equipped, ready to climb Ras Dashen.The director of the Times of London was to enroll ancient Greek interpreters, as he thought it wasthe language of the Country of mystery his reporters were to embark to².Since, dismally, our land has a name for Turmoil, Famine and War.Image is the real hey factor to seeing tourism change millions’ lives. Restoring an Image we had in arather near past, before years of Communism contributed to sweep it away.¹ Euromonitor International, marketers,http://www.euromonitor.com/Travel_And_Tourism_in_Ethiopia² Arrigo Petacco, Faccetta Nera, Storia della conquista dell’Impero, 2003, Mondadori, pp.191

4-Kundudo Action Research

A first mission essentially constituted of Horse experts and veterinarians was conduced from Dec.28th to Jan 10th 2008.One remnant feral horse was found, action research started with a few local participants, the greatlyendangered situation was recorded, the animal’s DNA collected from mane hair follicles.Some reconstruction of the pack’s story facing growing population and grazing pressure led to a firstassessment of possible future action, as per here attached report:

4.1 Kondudo Feral Horses, essentials. First Italian Mission Report

Abstract: a team of six horse experts, veterinarians and conservation ecologists from Italy finds alast remnant of a rare pack of feral horses. A first environmental and historic analysis attemptedthrough visits and interviews. Ideas to set up a rapid intervention to save the pack shared,planning of a further mission to include locals, sociologists, experts of action research in the fieldof conservation of endangered animal species or other strands. Necessity of a comprehensiveanalysis. Tourism proposed as an economic alternative to the rapid ecosystem destruction.The Kondudo is an amba, flat-top Mountain, 26 kms from Harar on a direct line, 70 on the road.It is seen at a distance above the roofs of the thousand years old Jogol, an UNESCO World heritagesite, the only walled city south of the Sahara.

The Kondudo top, a wetter grassland than any around, holds a pack of wild horses, the last in thewhole of East Africa.They are known to locals in the area since at least 200 years. Tafari Mekonnen, future EmperorHaile Selassie helped by an uncle tamed his first own beloved mount from that pack when a youngboy, age about 10, 107 years ago.*He was born under the Kondudo, in Ejersa Goro.We heard a claim there were other wild horses on Gara Muleta also near Harar but the claim appearsto be wrong, and possibly in the Din Din forest area, we may soon verify this, but it seems unlikely.After measuring Ras Dejen or Dashen to the metre at 4550m, Ethiopia’s highest peak and themountain whose height is still most misquoted on the net, I set up a team of six young Italianveterinarians, naturalists and a photographer to study the pack. I had heard about them duringpreparations to that mission.Only one animal was found on Jan 3rd 2008, a 10-12 year mare. We slightly doped her and collectedhair follicles from her mane, to obtain the DNA. We collected other similar samples from horses intwo areas of Ethiopia to act as a blank.She is healthy and shows evident signs proving she has not been tamed: untouched hoofs, weakmuscular structure and belly form showing she is a grazer, not used to work and essentially confinedto the flat top of the amba, as the rest of the pack was. We could not find the other seven to tenmembers of the population.

Trying doping with a crossbowInvestigation led us to discover that a man, in the name of Mohammed Yasin has been trying to tamethe rest of the pack since the last twelve years and considers them as his property, though the taminghas so far proven not totally successful. He releases the horses after every harvest seasons. Oncereleased they rush immediately to their environment and live as their ancestors have, using for waterthe flat mountain top’s small round pond, which had not dried at the top of the dry season thisJanuary, and the 13 hectares flat top grassland for feed.It is also reported the abducted horses prove poor at carrying wheat about, jumping and tossing itabout regularly, with some fellow peasants mocking the guy for his horses, others jealous of hisskill. Mohammed has presumably sold or tamed the fowls.

Cows and a couple of asses were on the top.A close friend of mine had seen them 17 years ago, there were ten of them, with a young calf indifficulty, fallen off the cliff, he could not save him. By then cows were already around. Recently afamily has encroached just under the top, on a small amba side. Another acquaintance, born nearby,saw them in 1952, again about ten, white and beautiful.We deduce two things:- The amba top has probably sustained, since known to man and for at least 200 years a pack,no more than a 10-15 strong, in line with the water and fodder availability and the recalledpresence of cheetahs and lions in the past. Weaker or “excess” horses would be predated.- The pristine situation can be reinstalled, but only through a very prompt action, as the likes ofAto Mohammed** will soon succeed in taming and ruining the pack, whilst the cowsencroaching in spite of the difficult accessibility, coupled with the general increase inpopulation pressure will complete the annihilation of a very special site indeed.The available DNA samples will allow us at least to detect any eventual blood mixing caused by atoMohammed, most probably a better classification of the whole pack.The Government has marked a red point on the tracks up, saying no one should encroach above,presumably even not trespass the point, but no one has ever enforced it.In the area the “Stinico” mountain, practically the southern end of the Kondudo small range -namedafter an Italian official stranded there during the Fascist invasion and there overpowered- apparentlyUntouched hoofsholds cave engravings of date yet to be established, and Goba tarara near by to the north east bearsvisible huge caves filled with chiropters (bats) of different species.The expedition members noticed how in the area no Coca Cola is found for miles around, whilsteven the remote Semiens have their soft drinks selling points. Roads are unkempt, the school at YayaGuda, our starting point, deprived of everything, no pipes around though the mountain has manynatural sources of fresh clear water.The mission, during the twelve days tour, verified a total disinterest to what is natural or ofnaturalistic attraction: on the road to Harar the Awash Park is ridden with cows and pastoralists andno one seems to care. A question on this to the impending strong man of Oromia has led to a verystupid answer indeed, local scouts report.The Rift Valley Park has been de facto suppressed, wardens receive no pay, a tree every minuteleaves the banks of Lake Shala on mule back and a 40 ton lorry comes to take away its peculiarsands every half an hour. Thousands of hectares have been destroyed. This has occurred oraccelerated badly just in the last three years.We urge the following path to the restoration and promotion of the Kondudo area, with the objectiveof bettering the whole Nation’s image and the lot of the local, forsaken peoples.The only way forward is offering them alternatives to the destruction the horse pack and the ambaenvironment:Private and International intervention objectives1. Complete the wild horse research with the participation of as many interested bodies asfeasible, some first DNA results expected within 40 days.2. Offer Mohammed Yasin a paid warden job after he has released the horses permanently3. Enforce the no encroachment, no livestock policy around the amba’s top: easily enough, puta manned cow gate on the narrow, single existing access to the top.4. Check on the horses, the amba’s top and the pond’s ecological balance5. Build a simple but attractive tourist lodge above Yaya Guda6. Use the occasion of the construction to give water to Yaya Guda and its school7. Form local tourist guides and hotel staff8. Build through publicity an image for the locality: Kondudo, wild horses, rock engravings,trekking opportunities and bat caves.9. Promote other income generating activities in the area, both related and unrelated to tourism.Govt. policy objectives1. Electing the Kondudo to an animal Sanctuary2. Bettering the access roads conditions3. Putting a Police post on the way between Gursum and Bombas, to avoid possible bandits’attack, a thing sometimes occurred in the past.4. Participate through the ETTC in the promotion of the locality as a complement to Hararitself.I have discussed the matter with the Minister of Tourism, the local Environment Protection Agencyand the Africa office of the UNEP, based in Addis. I am building up contacts and my friends in Italyand Spain are in the early stages of planning a fund for the Lodge.Contacts have been held during the mission with local guides, local officials in Yaya Guda andGursum, with the General Manager of the biggest factory in the area, Harar Beer, and other localforeseeable investors and interested individuals.I am totally convinced the pack and the grassland-wet area will prove not only a singular assetenvironmentally, but a serious source of income.The famous Namib desert horse pack, escaped from German occupants ca. 1915 and thus muchmore recent, less fascinating in their natural history and deprived of the aura of myth, mystery,“distant and awesome” the Kondudo pack bears, attract well over 10,000 tourists a year.The Kondudo offers ever bettering views as you climb over a distant area and a breathtaking toppanorama from Harar to the distant Somaliland borders eastwards, as well as two differentiateddifficulty climbs and spots of nearly untouched vegetation.You climb a three thousand metres mountain, here alone in the whole planet, for the bonus offinding and enjoying the presence of a very special and indeed rare horse breed.

An unexpected novelty Ethiopia will have to offer. The Habesha since early medieval times set theirheirs to the throne on at least three historically known ambas, Debre Damo, Ghishen, Weyni. Thosewere the prisons that inspired the famous Dr. Johnson’s “Rasselas”.I realize now this most amazing pack had elected as their golden “prison” an amba of such beauty,themselves, before man did, at Kondudo, some day lost in the aura of time. There they will be, not ina single man’s captivity. This is our first task: free the wild beauty, the magic horses of Ethiopia.

*Leonard Moseley: “A Biography of Ras Tafari Mekonnen”**The second mission was later to reveal the main horse looter’s name to Jundi Ahmed Marco, Addis and Varese, 23-29 Jan. 2008

4.2 The path to the Second MissionI had the chance to contact the resident BBC journalist through my friend Dr. Richard Pankhurst.A World Service piece was broadcast on Jan 11th.ETV extensively publicized our first mission in bulletins in six languages, both radio and tv, as theyhad done for the Ras Dejen feat, thanks to my contacts Masresha, and Haile at the national newsagency ENA.A regional paper did the same in Italy, while googling Kondudo (Kundudo is the righttransliteration, but it was on the net as Kondudo alone) before January 2008 gave three entries on anendemic shrub, Pyttosporum abyssinicum. It now, before any publication from the second mission,gives a staggering 230 entries, as news was taken up by many sites all over Africa at first, thenworldwide.Basra’s DNA is safely preserved in Rome, but the tests cost and the lack of DNA from other animalsin the pack convinced me to postpone analysis.I soon managed to contact Meftuh Shash of the site www.gursum.com, the most active member ofthe Gursum community in the diaspora, vice head of the FBCGA, Fugnan Bira Communituy GroupAssociation. He helped me contact Sahaldin Khairo and the similar HIAGI association of Hararemigrants. Their help was instrumental in the organization of the second mission, and I rapidlyrealized the whole conservation effort could be devised as an HIAGI/FBCA project.With some friends in Italy we had previously taken some steps to found an NGO, collected resumesof interested individuals. Alessandro Minuti in Varese in Northen Italy and Giorgio Bulgarelli inRome being the most active. We rapidly decided for an Easter visit, with Alessandro Minuti andJonathan Pinna, one of my most dedicated ecology student, as Italian members.It was already clear by then FBCGA and HIAGI would find other expedition members locally.As Meftuh indicated, we got ready to visit the Stinico caves as well.4.3 The second Italian Mission to the Kundudo, preliminary reportItalian Mission finds the last feral horses of Africa outside the Namib desert,the most endangered on the planet. Report of the second mission to savethem. A theory on their origin, prehistoric rock engravings found on the samemountain chain.Abstract: a second action research mission to the Kundudo in Ethiopia finds what is left of theKundudo Feral horse pack in a state of semicaptivity.Ecological situation of the Menderrostate forest rapidly evaluated. A local NGO setup to protect the area, with base in Addis Ababaand members in different countries. Prehistoricrock paintings revealed, a tentative theorydeveloped on the origin of the pack. Guidelinesand a plan for immediate action drawn.Kundudo, an Amba cut flat above the skies ofHarar, is made up mainly of limestone , contraryto most similar Ethiopian mountains. Over thebasalt that covers it like an icing, dozens of metresthick, having climbed aside a fall, over a lastgreat cave out of which springs a torrent, passing through a narrow pass through heavy molten lavafronts, we climb on a flat pastureland where our feet rest on a thick, ceding dry grass cover. Anhumid area where rains have failed for now over seven months. The feral horses are not there anymore.Of the last, Basra, we found in January, only DNA from hair follicles is left.We hear she has been taken down, and died of starvation. Someone perhaps does not want the lastferal horses to be saved? They are so ancient, contrary to those in the Namib, no one can recall whenin History they got free, always been up the Kundudo, as a coherent part of it, since an era confusedin the aura of times. For sure Ras Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie, The Lion of Judah, The king ofKings, a minute man of great political weight -a mythical figure and god to many “Rasta”, as Jah-Kundudo North access, above the Immis cave, left in the shade the passage, not practicable to cattle or horse.got his first mount up there, ca. 1900.We found, just under on the North face, on March 21th, four other members of the pack, initially andsince sightings of up to 55 years ago around ten strong. We can say we found what is left of the pack, as the Ethiopianmembers of the team continue to search around and have thename and the directions to find a man who has another horse,Seifi Abrahim, with two others apparently sold. Basra’s fate isstill under investigation.What is left to rebuild the small initial population is a Stallion,5-7 years old, very difficult, almost impossible to control yet inthe hands of Jundi Ahmed Oumer, the guy who also possessesthe two 8-10 and10-12 years old mares respectively and a veryyoung, three months old fowl as in these pictures. The pond, March 22nd 2008Interviews offer another simple and tragic explanation for the demise of Basra, probably thematriarch of the pack. “Those horses you cannot easily sell, nearly impossible to domesticatecompete with our cows up there. We take them away from the pond, they forcibly come back…”

The pond was still deep enough (a metre at the centre, 60 cm at the side, 1,5 m wide) to maintain tenhorses in March, after the worst drought in over a decade, but not enough for the staggering figure offifty two cows, up from the eight of January. We classified them as property of the ten families thatlive higher on the mountain. The pond too had been somewhat dug and its sides remould fromJanuary, to retain more water in a smaller surface area and avoid drying out, apparently.Basra was killed by stupidity. The same gross ignorance epidemic, both preventable and curable,that will have destroyed a pristine mountain paradise before two rains, within two years.The pasture land is being destroyed by the day up there, like the 8445 hectares of forest underneathhave been all but finished in six years. The once dense tree area below is still classified as MenderroState Forest, but is is gone, mainly in thousands of fertilizer bags to far Addis Ababa, as coal.Easy to say: 12,8 hectares at 3,000m will only provide a sustainable living to three of your tenfamilies. Is it not better to live all, with many others if tourism revenue? Wouldthey understand it?The simple and clear cut answer is YES, if we manage to promote this heaven, if theywill see tourists coming, revenue and, firstly, manage to save what is left of it.But as a serpent does not roll after biting ts own tail, it is a bit complicated, andrequires a lot of attention, staggering masses of public relations and lobbyingwork at all levels. Tourism requires a pristine environment, and at the same timeappears a requirement to convince locals to comply with ecologically sound rules.Part of the pack on the North slope Prof. Viganó, teacher of ecology andrural development in Italy, twenty years’ experience on the field in Africa had atfirst a UNEP mandate to solve the issue, together with the local EnvironmentalProtection Agency. He now has a chargedirectly from the State Presidencies of Oromia and Harari, the two Federal Regional States implied.He tackled the task turning his till here personally sustained efforts to a project of a local NGO with roots outsideEthiopia, FBCGA, the body of Gursumese all over the world. They started in 2005 study and conservationprojects, still at the initial stage, on the same area.

A mare had a three months old colt, hope of the pack

More important, FBCGA has the local knowledge and, as it was to be rapidly proven, canmove people, open doors.

The choice of a more academic, foreign pushed action research would have easily been provenbelated, costly and worthless, given the delicate implications on the field, and the bare fact Prof.Viganó’s two teams got there late.Meftuh Shash Abubakar, the most active of the Gursumese in the Diaspora, as they often callthemselves, provided the second team with material and personal help.At our arrival in Harar we were welcomed by the State President and his adjoint, a known memberof parliament. Before we got to Gursum, administrative capital of the area and point of departure forthe climb, the whole cabinet was ready, and made a special meeting the late night on the Mewlidfeast day, to make sure all necessary resource persons and material will be with us the followingdawn. A key figure, Cheick Abdulnasir Adem had been convinced to lend a hand and a mission byKasitti, the man from Gursum who had taken up the only nine foreigners to visit the Amba in the lastyears had already identified the whereabouts of the horses.We visited the stallion, indicated him as Harla on the specimens (name suggestion by Meftuh) thewhite mare, (named Basra through resemblance to the one lost) the red one and the fowl.All were healthy, though not well nourished. The fowl is a male evaluated at three months of age asimmediately confirmed by Jundi Ahmed, the horse temporary holder.We collected a bunch of hair follicles from each to extract the DNA except the fowl, obviously withthe mother and thinly maned anyhow, and Aberra Mekuria, head of natural Resources Managementin the area and dean of the missionconducted this interview in Oromiffa(local language), with Jundi Ahmed:Why did you take the horses down?They were in danger because of Cheetahs.Cheetahs would kill them and suspendthem from trees to consume them slowly.There is no water up there, little grass.Are still there Cheetahs around?On the other side, in the forest, do notknow how many.Where do you keep them?Near our houses.Can you sell them?Not well, but it is possible. Two mares and the colt, the stallion was always on a leashThey are hard to handle. Do you take them up the Kundudo again? The stallion we cannot free, orhe will disappear, the others we handle, so we could take them up. How long would that take? Twohours or more walk. Do they have names? None of them.Aberra in the debrief the day after would comment: Leopards, rather, are known to kill animalsexactly that way, yet we know the horse have been there since a long time, with their number notdiminishing particularly fast due to this cause. There are just two or three cheetahs left on theMendero mountain itself (second peak on the chain, the first being the Stinico, Kundudo follows).Mendero has been partly reforested, partly holds its original tree cover. Cheetahs killed 33 lambs inan incident five years ago in the near area named Harash. Other wildlife include monkeys.He noted Jundi feels the horses are his property. He has presumably being tampering with themfor a few years now. I deduce he is the Mohamed Yasin our Kasitti, otherwise a usually exactinformant had mentioned as the main horse looter, during the first Italian mission.

The claim there is another horse from the pack in a certain Seifi’s hands must be verified rapidly, asthe whereabouts of recently sold other members, possibly including fowls, obviously easilytamed.Those found look desperately underfed. Rapid action is needed lest they will suffer’s Basra’shorrid fate.I compiled a list of cattle owners, later confirmed by Aberra, whilst interviews with them were heldby me and different local members of the group.One Abdurahman Mahmud owns alone the exact fourth of the cows, thirteen.During a survey of the flat top we noted a structure I had seen just from a distance and not visitedduring the first mission. It proved to be an ancient mosque. The white stone walls, looking possiblyrearranged, point clearly to Mecca, while excavation on the south west side, opposite the partpointing towards Arabia indicate 80cm or slightly deeper foundations of white limestone.A tomb was found on the surface, also opened and tampered with. We recuperated some humanbones and clay fragments from it, in view of a possible carbon 14 aging, whilst the news we laterheard push me to request the help of archaeologists.Local historic knowledge dates the mosque possibly at the end of the long Harla period (cavedwellers), just before Harar took the lead as the main Gey, or city around. This is the period whentread and other trades shifted, from the Adulis-Axum route of ancient days -when the ancient,Christian Empire traded straight with Nanjing in China and all along the Red Sea- to a new routefrom the Zeila port to the Ethiopian East, via newly Islamised lands.Should a proper dating confirm local knowledge, it would reveal up there, in the magic settingchosen by old monasteries all over the world, one of the oldest Muslim Shrines in the continent.The oldest for sure at 3000 metres, near the sky.Reasoning on the scene a couple of nights later an idea occurred to me: not even the most resilient ofpeoples would take thousands of well cut stones up there on their backs. Lime quarries are far under.Horses or mules must have been used.When I first posted on specific sites the finding a first easily dismissed theory was they had escapedfrom fascist hands, as a garrison was annihilated on Mount Stinico in 1935. Prior sightings andLeonard Moseley’s biography of Haile Selassie cited in the first mission report exclude this.My idea is that those who first built the mosque, having evidently had horses, let some of them freejust for the beauty of it. Or they had to abandon the area swiftly for some conflict reason.Similarly in the Namib desert at the onset of WWI the German ambassador was taken a prisonerwhile the guest of his British counterpart. The whole German community was offered short noticeand means to rapidly leave, without the animals, in a vessel. They had to let them free.A direct liaison to the shrine would possibly make the pack one of the oldest in the world.We collected some samples for C14 dating from a violated shrine on the east side of the mosque.We visited the cave seen below the top in the first photo of this report and noted an Hystrix(porcupine) spike. A brief investigation on the spot conduced to the finding of a complex cave, withat least three ramifications seen from the entry, seven in all we are told. It had been blocked withcubic metres of stone rubble by the cattle grazers that reached the top.They felt quite wrongfully the porcupines menaced the cows again, like the horses, so they walledthem in. Rapid destruction of a nice innocuous wild beast and probable cancellation of the cave frommemory. We will attempt to explore it in July.

The Presidents of the two Regional States implied have confided us a vaster project: try and save theKundudo promoting it as an arrival point of a tourist route across the Country’s east, globally over2000 km. A great Savannah park in a critical conservation situation, the Awash, the Harar zone witharound sixty painted caves, a vital secondary reserve of the huge antelope, the Mountain Nyala(Tragelaphus buxtoni), volcanic crater lakes, rift valley lakes with endemic birds. Enough to interestthe most apathetic. A lot to work on, as the route is mostly unknown to any sort of tourism.As we were evaluating the natural resources in the area we visited the cave Meftuh had mentionedfrom Toronto in his many supportive mails. On March the 22th the three Italians found a paintedgrotto not known to the vast catalogue at the disposition of Luca Bachechi of the Italian Institute ofPrehistory and Protohistory, a world authority on the matter. Amongst other an ochre colour cow, aserpent god and a man riding a feral beast.The place, Stinico mountain, owes its name to a fascist military officer, who got isolated and killedthere during the otherwise victorious invasion campaign of 1935. A juxtaposition to the fates ofpossibly one thousand killed with gas in their refuges in a big cave at Zuria Muhi.Matteo Dominioni of Turin University still found the other year a number of their bodies. It wasprobably one of the worst illegal killings (11/4/1939, war was long over by then) of the past century.Views beyond any expectation make the Kundudo a worth climb, up to reach a myth, on the top.Abyssinians of royal descent used to jail their offspring to protect them from enemies and avoid theirparticipation in palace conjures. Probably more than two centuries ago Horses found this magicrefuge, with permanent water, grass and special medicinal herbs. Forgetful of man graze peacefullyaround the pond above the cave-source of the Immis creek, still there in the worst drought in tenyears.The task of the “Kundudo ActionGroup” an NGO createdpurposefully in Addis Ababa isto find the way to take the cows down and the horses back up.The origin of the feral horse pack is, idea aside, a real mystery.A third mission from July 9th to23rd will probably finally see the pack free again. Amongst those getting ready for it Cara Dorothy de Ferranti, a Britishconservationist with a smallteam. Luca Bachechi hasaccepted the task of Seniormission ArcheologistSurroundings of the proposed ecolodgeWe are looking for photographers, film makers, speleologists, natural scientists, horse lovers.A fourth mission in December, hopefully will start tourism in the area, and somewhat open theExtended North Route. A celebration more than a study, it will culminate in an evening concert, by a

prominent violoncellist organized by Bruna Panella, a famed event organizer, up Kundudo toppastures, near the sky.Successive phases include setting up an original tree nursery, to start serius replanting of Podocapusfalcatus, Hagenia spp., Juniperus procera, Olea africana.The assistance to the families that inevitably have to leave the so limited top area, reserved to theoriginal horses, is a specific project “Agropastoral peoples of the Kuni Muktar and Kundudo,economic alternatives to ecosystem destruction”, prepared as one of the two key elements of theproject annexed to this action research paper.The other side of it “The Exteded East Route, Action Research to prepare a sustainabletourism package through people’s participation”, is introduced after this report.Our second visit, thanks to the local support, has become a more complex project to comprise notonly the tourism route development attempt and the saving of two highly endangered populationsand ecosystems, in the Kundudo and Kuni Muktar areas, but an integrated conservation approach toinclude proposing -and where possible start building up- economic solutions for the local residents.Marco, Varese, 3-6/4/2008Photos: courtesy Jonathan Pinna, director’s assistant, second mission; Paola Borghi, Horse special., first mission.5- The Extended East Route, more and different tourism as a source anda result of appropriate conservation action researchAction research in conservation is a peculiar activity done with and through the participantbeneficiaries. It requires an good degree of interdisciplinary knowledge, the uttermost dedication,the sage art of compromise and quite some clever public relation skills.It is not the sort of classic research project that is born in an academic circle, awaits difficultly andcompetitively allotted funds, starts a few months or even years after conception, is the fief of selfesteemed experts, costs a little fortune for appreciated, but mostly just theoretical results.It is sometimes born of an urge, others of a community idea. It has many times a clever “generator”figure as a head. Not an hero, a community leader with wide and differentiated knowledge andinterpersonal skills.The amazing Kundudo research feat, that is effectively leading to the saving and at the same timepromoting in a number of countries of a very special place indeed is not the result of classicresearch, not at all.People’s participation was and is the key to the success. It has been a time consuming effort bornmainly by a few persons. People who took it as a total personal entrusted mission and were able toelicit participation in a few countries, from different volunteers of European, Ethiopian descent at theword start, not as a belated and usually disastrous stage of ‘handover to locals’.Yet all this is fruitless unless it has an economic meaning. Real alternatives are found to thedestruction or it will take place. Whatever the coercion, whatever the will.The Etna in Italy is Europe’s only fully active volcano -an amazing historic value- was covered indense thicket and forests. Italians were not supposed to be poor and backwards, ignorant people, yetthey proved the contrary: its slopes were totally deforested in fairly recent times.

Up until Maletto, an hamlet near the crater rim. Agriculture has taken the land, often a bit like on theKundudo, together with construction work too near the top.A very dangerous spot with heavy volcanic activity. That too was not enough to deter the people.Only a mixture of learning, and economic yet sustainable growth can save us. All over the world.Conservation is never, never an easy task. Complex tangled interests can be overcome only provingto stakeholders that there are objectively better economic choices than cut and encroach.The economic and general awareness growth fostered by the planet’s fastest growing industry,tourism can be so powerful it can effectively eradicate poverty in selected areas of countries of theSouth for a wide sector of the population.Italy, a rich country, had a few times more tourists then Egypt, a low income one in the earlyseventies. Now it has a lot less.Egypt has used tourism as the major single contribution to becoming a middle income Nation.Tourism development is a mixture of infrastructure, creation of a culture of accueuil, safety andsecurity, smart promotion over and above existing riches of international value.Ethiopia has also seen a near four fold increase in tourist arrivals, from around 80,000 in 1990 tonearly 300,000 in 2007, in just eighteen years.Some of them are just visiting family or use the tourist visa for other personal or business purposes.Yet a good estimate would say that over 200,000 do the main part of the Northern Route, Bahar Dar,Lalibela, Gondar and possibly a glimpse of the Semien ranges, often without making it to Axum orthe amazing Gheralta rock hewn churches in Tigray.Tourists have limited resources and especially, time: they run across the land with amazingly fulltime schedules to cover a minimum of ten to a maximum, mostly, of 16 days. So they are pushed tochoose the easy, the known, the organized, what their friends have reported as astounding. A numberof professional operators in the sector, pushed also by heavy taxation, at times make a real rip offthem, asking locally a minimum of 1,000 dollars for trips that cost them less than half all included,and dismally provide very poor accommodation.Sidamo coffee, a brand name recently won in court from an USA based multinational who had... tried to patent it, prepared the original way.

The Awash Park, discussed above: Savana and river bank environment of the highest quality.Needs pushing the Kereyu, Oromo and Afar settlement ten Kms. from the borders. There is no dearth of land, it requires some attention, and skilful enforcement of the nocow with wild life logic policy.The pompously named camp “Ras Hotel” would fare better if the old trailers were sold or disposed of and some bungalows built instead. A great attraction would be organizing, at a really minimal initial investment of say 10,000 birr, 650 euros for ten MTB bikes, mountain bikingin the park with an armed escort. Bikers in a Botswana park, well escorted

Harar, UNESCO World Heritage site, 5,000 visitors a year, to increase rapidly if the Route is set upand promoted. Employing only original material in restoration work, avoiding new constructionstyles within Jogol, the walled citadel and protecting the buffer zone are main present priorities.

Original Harari colours?

Original materials, proper restoration work

Koremi, other Argobba VillagesArabu Gheba, or, the “Arab got in” (to our land). A depreciative term taken to indicate a dispersed,discriminated people. Their language is at risk, few still speak it, even the elders speak only a“broken” Argobba, only occasionally.These lost, last villages command the awe of the far and distant, in culture and time.A way out of oblivion, a come back in an Ethiopia that, more maturely than almost any country in theworld, now respects Islam as Christianity without division, without rivalries and contrast, could be offered to the beautiful Koremi village on the way to Babile, Dhakata valley. A lodge, here too, would have to be conceived in a near future.Alternatively, probably even better, some families could be helped to build an extra house, withproper sanitation facilities. Koremi will be a stop during horse and trek to the Kundudo Range andBack to Harar. Other Argobba Villages are found on the way to Ankober, near Aliyu Amba.

Homes and people in Koremi

Kuni Muktar Mountain Nyala sanctuary.It was instituted with help from the Zoological Society of London toprotect rare and endemic Mountain Nyala and remaining highlandforest 18 km west of Asebe Teferi, 180 km from Harar.According a 2001 WWF paper Mountain Nyala were shot after the fallof the Derg (1991), forestlands were cleared, no infrastructure existed¹.The reserve collapsed totally. In fact, a researcher put the extantTragelaphus buxtoni population at none in the reserve in 1996.Yet a count by EWCO (Eth. Wildlife Cons. Org.) in Oct 2001 and Feb2002 showed respectively 25 and 28, with a confidence the latterestimate meant they had counted all of them².The reserve, now less than halved, with an increasing number of treesfelled, is on a range, the Ahmar mounts, of particular naturalisticvalue. It hosts also Minilik’s bushback, Lion and other wild animals.A felled tree, many still up, KuniTime and resources are allotted in the annexed Extended East Route Development Action Research tosurveying the sanctuary with local scouts and localnotables to study a way to protect and valorize itthrough tourism, much in the way of the Kundudo.With the major difference that a remnant structureshould be in place, at least formed scouts, and there isno such thing as a Kundudo Sanctuary, there is one,neglected as it may be, there.An NGO from Barcelona, atown with direct links withHarar, where Harar itself wasrecently awarded the UNESCOPart of the Amhar chain, courtesy Raimon Mariné world peace prize, Selvans, hastargeted the reserve, and will be implied in the activity. Dr. Raimon Mariné, incharge, is a close acquaintance of Prof. Marco Viganó, who held a presentationon the Ras Dejen measurement in Barcelona at a conference Mariné organisedlast year.

A couple of rare Beasts…Tragelaphus buxtoni was discovered by science only in 1910. A taxidermist in 1600 left in the world, manyLondon found it in the prey of a Mr. Ivor Buxton. It has also been named the left of the one without horns?Queen of Sheba anthelope. It is one of the biggest, with adult males weighing overthe only available measure of 280kgs. A myth in their own, still a much desired trophy for those nowrare Beasts who rather had that astounding beauty as a dead specimen on a wall than free in the wild.¹ M. J. Jacobs and C. A. Schloeder: Impacts of Conflict on Biodiversity and Protected Areas inEthiopia, 2001. WWF paper.² Argaw K.F., Kebede A., Ereso H.:A a progress report of Mountain Nyala and Menilik’s Bushbuckin the Kuni Muktar Mountain Nyala sanctuary, 2002. Report to the EWCO, Addis Ababa.

Elephants and rock marvels, Dhakata Valley, BabileOn the way to the Kundudo, around thirty km from Harar, along the main road to Jijiga andSomaliland -being now widened and resurfaced to tarmac- lies the Dhakata Valley.Peculiar rock formations stand in clear sight, from a distance. Harder rock that withstood erosion ofall sorts, magma blocks and bubbles assorted in undestroyable yet equilibristic arrays.Nice formations indeed, no Elephant in sight, looked for them a whole day. They used to be seen along the road.

courtesy Alberto Vascon, www.ilcornodafrica.itI have no real knowledge to discuss the situation of the Babile Elephant Sanctuary. Yet, had I beenin any ways a partner of Flora Eco-power, the firm that took about a third of it, the one near the roadand the accessible part to produce Ricinus communis for biodiesel, I would have steered clear of anatural reserve. There is no dearth of land, neither less accessible nor less fertile around Oromia.We need access to the elephants, an endemic subspecies many would say, Loxodonta Africanaabyssinica, to promote this tourist route. Now they are a lot further west in an inaccessible area,.Another way of reaching them should be found, or, drastically, ask excuses to the investor andremove his plantation, replant the destroyed 60,000 to 80,000 hectares of tall shrub (in part alreadydamaged by the people around) at the expenses of those who conceded an animal Sanctuary forcultivation. I admit they did so under a difficult trade off situation: move people or Elephants.I have no say, again. I would have moved the cultivation to a remote area.For a sign of respect to our land, at least take off the eco prefix in the name of your firm!

Further East to SomalilandThe totally novel part, to include around 500 km transborder in Somaliland. Visits to Hargeisa andLaas Geel, less than eight km away, considered by almost all as the best prehistorically painted caveon the planet. On, to the Sea, the attraction Ethiopia misses. We will not miss it here. It is sufficientto the scope to work and share with a friendly neighbouring Country.The project will tour, detail lodges, road conditions, route times between proposed stops, evaluatingthe Somaliland leg with local authorities and stakeholders, similarly to the Ethiopian main side.Issues regarding trans border tour operation, security and all other upcoming issues that regardtourism there will be explored as carefully as possible.A first time transnational cooperation will be elicited. Very few visit Laas Geel and even Berbera.Enriching to Ethiopia, tourism cooperation may prove absolutely vital for Somaliland.

A trip South in the Rift.The proposed extension of the Eastern Route to include the rift valley lakes has possible day visits,or overnights in Zway, Langano, Awasa. Koka is an interesting artificial lake on the way fromMojo, Wendo the Paradise as Haile Selassie named it a must visit, while the Rastas’ hamlet ofShashamene-Melka Uda is worth a cultural visit.Two of the Rift Valley Lakes, Abijata and Shala were the siege of an interesting park, whosesorrowful state has been mentioned.Wendo needs immediate attention, as deforestation is taking place at a rapid pace, since a fewmonths only, right on top and around His Majesty’s former villa (Beta Menghist), now part of theState Run local Wabi Shebelle Hotel.Forest fires. Just over the National College of Forestry in Natural spring in a forest clearing, Wendo GenetWendo. A two day’s effort to stop them, March 24th 2008,after a night they were up running again.Over the Awassa pass into Sidamo LandThe Sidamo way of life respects trees, knows no plastic bag, precious little or no air and waterpollution. We were not surprised to find here the right lodge project, so successful, and for preciouslittle investment, Aregash lodge in Irgalem, in a couple of photos here under. (from www.flicr.com)

A Minilik’s bushbuck slept just under our hut, we saw hyenas in the evening, with around tenspecies of birds, including the African Fish Eagle and Vultures. The guy in the tent, Alessandro thesociologist, had to come in at night, as the Hyena were around. The guards obliged us to dismantlethe tent in case it got damaged. We saw how Musa ensete, a banana tree is used to make a set ofdifferent foods, bags and better packaging. Caves acting as refuges to explore, trees all over, just twoKm. from Irgalem town centre.A cattle bone is the tool to extract the starches, the bulky end side of it thrashes the hearth of the stem, richer inflours, the flat part acts as a knife to rip the leaf down. Rigorously clean feet! Photo courtesy Jonathan PinnaBlue track option. The other side of the Rift, Ascending to Ankober on the Salt Road.An enriching variation on the way back to Addis. It needs evaluation as the road from Awash toAnkober via Aliyu Amba is not a commonly used road. It would bring a powerful glimpse ofOrthodox Christianity in the Highlands to let a voyager wholly understand Ethiopia, sloping alongthe ancient salt route from the east to the west and north Empire.Once again, the land of Myth where religious diversity is a wealth to show the world, not theproblem it has become in richer countries.

A group of prominent, clever people has built the ideal ecolodge for Ankober.I was a bit shocked when I heard Minilik’s palace in Ankober was taken as the site of an hotel.I feared just another destruction of an historic site. What I found instead was a brilliant Ethiopianengineer living in Geneva was implied and his relative, Dr. Hailegabriel, the director of the Instituteof Ethiopian Studies was too. The result is in the photos, marvel and example, done on the model ofthe still totally extant palace at Entoto. That palace itself was in all African History textboboks, butwas in a dismal state until a recent commendable restoration. Partly by the same group of people.A night in the Ankober Palace lodge offers a sense of history, of the pride and glory we shouldpromote, amazing views, excursions towards an ancient monastery and Let Marefiá, a beautifulcountryside site that de facto acted as Italy’s first consulate in Abyssinia. Located just underAnkober Lit or rather Lik marefiá was, around 1865, the naturalistic station and hospital of the mosthonest of Italian explorer-colonialists, Orazio Antinori, a personal friend to Minilik.Our mission to measure Ras Dejen restored his tomb site, dug by the field owner and friends toresemble a pool of near Olympic site, after interest shown by the Italian Embassy in 2004 revivedthe myth of the Fascist lost gold. We had the site refilled, defined the exact emplacement of thetomb, prepared its further possible restoration.